Building a brand identity for your business is very important. During my pursuit of knowledge of all things Pinterest, I learned the importance of BRANDING. Don’t get me wrong, I had heard all about branding before I got into Pinterest. I’ve been doing online marketing for years, but never really prioritized building a brand for my business until much later down the road.
And if you’ve heard me speak on Clubhouse, you’ve heard me talk about how important it is to have branded pins on Pinterest.
However, Pinterest aside – building a brand identity for your business is very important no matter what platform you’re marketing on.
The biggest and most successful companies have proper branding 😉
How to Build a Brand Identity for Your Business
Branding is one of the best ways to market your small business. A strong brand will set you apart from your competitors, foster trust in your business, and make it easier to produce cohesive marketing materials and compelling content that resonates with your target audience. Branding can also inspire your employees to work harder for the future of your business. If that’s not enough, branded content is 22 times more engaging than paid ads and drives higher brand recall, according to Pressboard Media.
You don’t have to possess branding superpowers to build a strong personality for your business. With good research, the right resources, and a little help from branding professionals like Network Nessi, you can develop a winning brand strategy in no time!
Why Should I Care About Branding?
We touched on some of the reasons branding is important for your business, but why should you care? Not only does branding improve the customer experience, but it’s a way of distinguishing your company and emphasizing what makes you better than your competitors. Branding is more about delivering an original experience than a unique product. Good branding can help you carve out a specific niche for your business, even in the most competitive industries.
Say you want to sell handmade candles. Because the candle-making market is incredibly saturated, effective branding is important for standing out.
For example, you could build your brand around forest conversation, producing candles with the scents of different trees and contributing a portion of your proceeds to organizations fighting deforestation. This brand identity will attract a highly-specific group of consumers—people who like candles, enjoy woodsy scents, and care about our forests. If no other candle business is offering the same brand experience, you will be the top choice for this group of consumers!
The Components of a Strong Brand
A strong brand features a few important components. First and foremost, your brand should align with your personal mission and values, as well as those of your customers. These are the larger goals you hope to achieve through your business, like supporting sustainability, helping people become financially independent, or empowering minorities to climb the corporate ladder.
Your brand strategy should also be flexible and fluid. Consumer behaviors change so rapidly that a stagnant brand identity can grow outdated in a matter of months.
As ZenBusiness explains, it’s important to anticipate change so you can adapt your branding and marketing methods quickly. Rebranding is a great way to modernize your business and stay relevant amid the ever-shifting values of your customers.
Aim for Cohesive Branding
Cohesion is another important element of branding. What does this mean? Intimatology explains that brand cohesion is the consistency and uniformity of your messaging across all channels and marketing avenues. This will make your business appear more authentic, reliable, and recognizable because your customers will know what to expect from you.
Cohesion ensures the personality of your business is evident in your product labels, packaging, website graphics, emails, social media posts, blog articles, paid advertisements, and even your Pinterest pins.
Connecting Your Brand with Your Target Audience
It’s not enough to develop a strong brand for your business. Your brand strategy needs to connect with your target audience if you want it to succeed. One way to do this is to use a consistent brand voice across all communications with customers. Address your customers as if you have a personal relationship with them, giving your business a human-like personality instead of keeping your messaging robotic and emotionless.
Never underestimate the value of emotion when it comes to communicating with your audience. Depending on your brand identity, you could use tone based on humor, empathy, or compassion to influence how people perceive your messaging. Use your tone of voice to convey the feeling you want your brand to elicit in your audience.
DIY Brand Building Strategies to Start ASAP
Are you ready to start building your brand? If you’re the DIY type, you can jump in right away! Start researching your target audience and your competitors so you have a solid understanding of the current market. Based on your research, develop a positioning statement that establishes your unique value proposition—the one thing your business offers that your customers cannot get anywhere else.
Next, come up with some words, metaphors, and concepts to describe your brand. It can help to imagine your brand as a person. Identify some of the qualities your brand would have that are human and use these to write a slogan or tagline for your company. This exercise can also help you come up with logo ideas!
Speaking of logos, you’ll want to spend some time coming up with a look for your brand. Choose brand colors that convey the feeling you want to elicit. Select one or two fonts to use across your website. Design a brand logo, website graphics, and social media posts using these fonts and colors. Finally, deploy your branding across all aspects of your business.
When to Hire a Pro
Professionals can help with many steps in the branding process. For example, you can hire a graphic designer to develop an attractive logo for your business or a web designer to rebrand your website. Consider also hiring a social media manager who understands your brand and can execute your desired tone of voice when interacting with consumers online. If you don’t even know where to start, you can even hire a branding expert to help you uncover your unique brand and bring it to life.
Many small business owners don’t start thinking about branding until it’s too late. The longer you neglect branding, the more money and time you will waste on ineffective marketing campaigns—and the more room you will give competitors to win the attention of your audience.
Start taking steps to develop a strong brand identity for your business today!
Not sure how to brand your business on Pinterest? Network Nessi can help you create a Pinterest marketing strategy to carve out a niche for your business and drive targeted traffic to your website. Schedule a free phone or Zoom consultation to get started!
About the Author
A few years ago, burned out and miserable from his job in corporate marketing, Lance Cody-Valdez decided it was time to invest in himself. He quit his job the following day and used his meager savings to stay afloat as he built a career as a freelance writer and content marketer. He created free-lance-now.com to help others use freelancing to escape the 9 to 5 daily grind.
Ending Notes...
What a valuable and information-packed post to help you get started on building a brand identity for your business! Lance’s tips are great – and can really make an impact on your success. If you’re completely clueless about branding or marketing in general, shoot me a message…I would LOVE to help!
If you’re looking to get your Pinterest account branded and in order, feel free to check out my Pin Like a Boss page where you can find several different training options to learn how to master Pinterest and create beautifully branded pins.
Comments? Questions? Ask them below! I will answer as soon as I can 
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